Steve Jobs

I’ve been a Mac guy ever since 1984, which is when my Dad bought a Mac Classic for his office. He thought it was the greatest, and he was right. Man, how many hours I spent at my Dad’s office on that cute little white box! (No hard drive, two disc drives.) I was drawing, writing, pointing, clicking. I was computing, and it was easy and fun. I was hooked.

In the 1990s, I had to confront the strange paradox that puzzled every Mac user: Despite the obvious superiority of the Mac (System 7 at that stage), and its ease of use, PCs still existed. How could this be? Mass delusion? I bored legions of friends with my Mac evangelism… and fretted about Apple’s predicted demise.

Then came the Return of Steve Jobs. He showed us how to turn a company around. And he did it by doing something unexpected — by me at least. While I thought the salvation of the Mac would happen when people saw what great software the OS was, Jobs went at it from the hardware end. He oversaw and (I think it’s fair to say) designed great-looking and great-working products that people couldn’t wait to get their hands on.

Steve Jobs brought us insanely great computers. Computers look and work the way they do today because of choices he made. They have mouses. They have trackpads. (Macs were the first to have them.) They have sophisticated font capabilities because Steve loved typography (like I do).

I love my Mac, and my iPod. I use them both every day. (No iPhone yet.) I love what these smart little things bring to my life. I hope Apple keeps making great things, now that Steve Jobs is gone. I feel like we all owe him a lot for what he brought to computing.